A year in cake

This last weekend I made a cake for my "best customer" Zephanie. This Cars cake was for her youngest son's second birthday. We first connected up when I made that same son's first birthday cake. So I guess it's our one year anniversary. Zephanie is my best customer because she'll tell anyone and everyone about the cakes I make so I've actually had many people contact me over the past year telling me Zephanie sent them my way. So in honor of the anniversary of my new bccf (best cake customer forever), here is a year in review done in cake. In September I made a cake for our friend Leo from the pool 3rd birthday. In October is when I made this guy for the Tulsa Sugar art show. I'm pretty lame and he actually hung around our house until December. Don't look too carefully at this one that I slapped together for our friend Hope's 4th birthday. In November I got a call from Zephanie's sister-in-law about making a superhero-themed cake for her son. I had ideas of how to incorporate Iron Man into the actual cake and not just the cupcakes, but this is what we ended up with. Sorry Iron Man.

Our little friend Isaac came all the way up to OK for his aunt's wedding on his birthday so I gladly filled his request for a penguin cake. I'll admit that I ended up making it 0ut of rice crispy treats after a catastrophic crumbling of my first version of this little guy. He is sitting on a poured sugar and frosting iceberg. I didn't end up doing all that much. I'm not sure why I was so lame, but I did decorate the chocolate covered rice crispy treats we brought to the church Christmas party. January ended up being EXTREMELY busy. At the beginning of the month, I did a little winter wonderland themed cake for the first birthday of a son of one of Zephanie's co-workers.

 Then the next couple of weeks I made the mistake of double booking weekends. I'm not going to do that again. One weekend I made a little purse and cupcakes adorned with accessories for the fashion party of a daughter of a former roommate of mine (although at that point I didn't realize we even knew each other before OK). That night I took this cake over to a surprise 40th birthday party for a friend of ours. (E saw this picture and asked, why do people always want you to make them a toilet cake?-- I was asking myself that same thing kid.) I double booked the following weekend with a veggie tales cake for the twins of one of Zephanie's coworkers. I had so much fun trying to recreate Larry, Bob, and all their friends out of candy clay. I also used a little candy clay as well as this Thomas cake for Zephanie's older son.
February was E's birthday, and in my usual form, I ran out of time to make him an actual cake.
Cake requests picked up again in the spring. One of Zephanie's friends asked me to do a "chocolate cake with vanilla filling" for his daughter's 11th birthday. This is a chocolate cake with a vanilla bean pastry cream, covered in chocolate ganache, wrapped in a chocolate collar with white chocolate accents. Next came my brother's wedding cake.
When I got back from the wedding I went to a mirror themed ladies' activity at church and brought this cake to share. Next came another slapped together 30th birthday cake for a friend of ours who also happened to be my periodontist's wife. The sugar daisy may or may not have been leftover from my brother's wedding. The next morning I delivered this cars themed cake to one of Brad's coworkers. Her son made a special request for Lightning McQueen and The King. Next came a simple cake to celebrate the addition of another little boy to the family of one of Zephanie's neighbors. Another one of Br's coworkers (who used to work with Zephanie) asked so a couple little cakes a couple days apart for her son's birthdays. A different one of Br's coworkers asked me to make a cake to match the invite for her twins' first birthday. That cake was followed by a pair of boots for another co-worker. Then in May cames the first cake that had nothing to do with Zephanie, Br's coworkers, or our friends. I donated a coupon to E's school's silent auction and it was redeemed by a really nice mom who asked for a dinosaur train cake for her son's second birthday.

Now let's just pretend that this cake for yet a different one of Br's coworkers doesn't look a whole lot like the dinosaur train cake.
In June a little friend of mine turned 12 and asked if I'd make her birthday cake. I told I would if she helped me make it. I sketched up a few ideas and then she put together a final idea and color scheme. I think she did an amazing job.
Then Zephanie gave me another jingle and asked for a baby shower cake. This is what we came up with together.
Then a couple weeks ago another one of Br's coworkers asked me to recreate her husband's "baby" for his 30th birthday. The car is actually made out of rice crispy treats. She also requested some cookies made to look like a couple of the gauges he'd just installed in his flat black, 1971 chevy chevelle with specialized rims. I was SO nervous making this one because I knew that all the details would matter A LOT. And after all that butter, powdered sugar, eggs, oil, fondant, vanilla, and chocolate, it takes us to the cars cake for the little boy who got most of this started. It's no wonder I can't keep a trim waistline. I feel so fortunate to have been given all these opportunities to use my favorite creative outlet so many times in the last 12 months.

Actually roughing it

Br took E with him on a scout camp out this weekend. E wanted to immediately jump in the car and get camping as soon as he found out. He also wanted to buy a gun to protect himself from deer (see the previous post).

The boys went down to Turner Falls for the night. During the course of the morning, Br sent me pictures of E having the time or his life. There were pictures with his stick.Pictures in the water
A picture with a new friend
A picture of my little boy being daring
And a picture with a "smile for mommy".
I hope the memories Br made with my little man made a sleepless night worth it.

Favorite conversations week of 8/21

E often tells me to close my eyes and follow him and no peeking (without grabbing my hand or anything).

When E finally settled down from his all-out meltdown about having to leave gymnastics after his class was over, he said: "Mom, I'm allergic to leaving".

Miss A asked her teacher on her first day back to school, "Does mommy miss me?"

E was looking through a sporting goods store add and began to explain to me that the items on a certain page were for deer hunting.
E-"We should buy this gun for daddy to shoot the deer and then we can eat it."
Me- "I don't think that daddy likes to shoot deer. There usually isn't a reason to shoot deer"
E-"Hmm. Well, sometimes deer can be mean and attack you and so you have to shoot them. That's what happens in my dreams sometimes."
He then spent a good chunk of his morning cutting out pictures from that add and telling me exactly why we needed each item to protect us from the inevitable threat from deer.

E's homework last week was to tell the names of all of his family members. We worked on it every day multiple times a day because he just insisted my name was Mommy Melton. He was still at that point when it came time to "turn in" his homework on Friday. When I picked up Miss A that day from her class the whole drive home she asking, "what's E's name?, what's A's name?, what's daddy's name?, what's mommy's name?" Then when we got home she was trying to get my attention. When I didn't respond to mommy she yelled "B".

When we were all getting ready for bed I decided to take my brazier off. Miss A immediately started yelling at me "You put that back on! Put it on!" and then she did something to my chest that made me wish I had kept it on.

That's what little boys are made of

My friend Lacie recently had a little boy to add to her family of two little girls. We celebrated with a classic little boy theme, "Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails". The stuff that actually looks good in the pictures (invite, bottle wraps, cupcake toppers, straw pennants, big pennant banner, and adorable rosette banner) were from the fabulous Loralee Lewis &Co. Her creations make putting a nice event together SO EASY. Luckily my plan for the rest of the decorations worked with her fantastic creations. I gathered up some scrapbook paper and wrapping paper and threw together paper rosettes, flags, origami snails, dogs, and frogs, as well as a few cutouts to fill space (let's just pretend what I contributed doesn't look sad next to what Loralee sent my way). We snacked on a hummus mud pit, chocolate frogs, snail cookies, snail deli roll-ups, a veggie lily pond, puppy chow, my take on ants on a log (chicken salad served on celery garnished with craisins) and ended with a glass of mud pie. The best part of the morning was the great company. I'm pretty sure Lacie keeps having babies so that we get an excuse to celebrate together---so thank you, Lacie, for 9ish months of pregnancy so that we could party!